Five-Man Lineups: Data Access

How many five-man rotations have been employed in the league this season? How often do players play together on the court? What are the offensive and defensive ratings associated with every five-man unit this season? Does one particular line-up outscore opponents? Some of these questions can be answered with the following data below. Each link should take you to a team break-down that identifies every five-man rotation for every team this season.

Want to know how how well the Washington Wizards play when Ian Mahinmi is substituted in for Dwight Howard? We can take a cursory glance at the five-man data:

Top two line-ups for the Washington Wizards through December 12th, 2018.

Just note that we aggregate the data; and that match-up data is effectively scrubbed. Therefore this is not a proxy for interaction in offense-defense match-ups.

Using the image above, the files are Excel dumps with five-man offensive lineup and their corresponding defensive lineup beneath them. In this case, we see that the lineup with Dwight Howard has played 7,627 seconds together for 264 offensive possessions, while the the Ian Mahinmi lineup has played 4,146 seconds together for 152 offensive possessions.

Similarly, we see that the Howard-led unit has an offensive rating of 111.36 with a defensive rating of 124.15; while the Mahinmi-led unit has an offensive rating of 104.61 with a defensive rating of 118.06. There’s not much difference here as the net ratings are -12.79 versus -13.45, respectively.

Also note how I aggregate possessions. There are some zero-valued defensive possessions with a defensive FGA. These occur on the backs of free-throws with substitutions; as I refuse to partition possessions and refuse to double count.

The biggest take-away is that most of the five-man lineups have only a handful of possessions. Across the entire league, less than ten percent of all five-man lineups has more than 27 offensive possessions played. In fact, the median is six possessions. So be careful using lineup data to make concrete decisions.

One interesting tidbit is also the number of unique lineups. Typically, teams with small numbers have roster stability. Teams broken up by trades or injuries will tend to have many unique lineups. Similarly, teams that are floundering will also have a high number as they are trying out new ideas in the midst of a seemingly lost-cause season. Apologies, Atlanta.

One of the things we can do with lineup data (not with the summaries below) is break out the maximum likelihood rotation for a team and identify if that team makes the most sense. For example, here is the Orlando Magic from this season; the team with the least amount of unique five-man lineups:

Note that the optimal Orlando Magic lineup performs exceptionally well around the half-time periods; closing the second quarter and starting the third quarter. We see that the standard rotation usually struggles to start games and put away games; with the final five minutes being a dramatic drop-off. Note: The darker the red, the worse the team is outscored; the darker the green, the better the team outscores their opponent.

Through December 12th, here are the teams ranked by least amount of unique rotations:

Orlando Magic – 103

Indiana Pacers – 112

Minnesota Timberwolves – 123

Denver Nuggets – 125

Portland Trail Blazers – 132

Washington Wizards – 143

Los Angeles Clippers – 146

Dallas Mavericks – 159

Oklahoma City Thunder – 175

Chicago Bulls – 176

Brooklyn Nets – 184

Houston Rockets – 189

Boston Celtics – 198

San Antonio Spurs – 200

Toronto Raptors – 205

Detroit Pistons – 208

Los Angeles Lakers – 209

Philadelphia 76ers – 213

Sacramento Kings – 218

Charlotte Hornets – 223

New Orleans Pelicans – 230

Milwaukee Bucks – 231

Memphis Grizzlies – 234

Miami Heat – 234

Golden State Warriors – 236

Cleveland Cavaliers – 239

New York Knicks – 249

Utah Jazz – 250

Phoenix Suns – 255

Atlanta Hawks – 329

Yes, that last one is not a typo. Here are all the teams’ five-man lineup summary statistics: